[Resolved] Had to go back to X2, X3 bogs down too much with plugins

I've been running X2 Producer with no problems at all.  I can add tons of plugins and everything works great.  I'm running Windows 7 64bit with an AMD Phenom II quad core 2.9ghz and 16gb of ram and an Edirol M-16DX mixer/interface.  When I installed X3 Producer and opened a project I was working on the cpu meters nearly maxed out and playback is terrible.  I removed almost all of the plugins and got it to work (more or less).  As soon as I added Slate Digital FG-X the CPU usage jumped way up.  With each plugin I insert or enable on the pro channel my CPU usage increases dramatically.  X2 never acted like this on my system.  I went back to X2 and everything runs perfectly like it always has.  Maybe X3c will make it usable on my system.  Right now I'm feeling like I wasted $150.  Any upgrades with X3 are apparently lost on my system.

I just happened upon the fix.  I turned off the VST background scan and set it to scan on startup.  Oddly enough that seems to have eliminated the problem.  Thanks for the response!

Glad you got it sorted, but you should really contact Tech Support or file a problem report so the Bakers can look into it if there's a persistent problem with background scan on your system. In the long run if you can get it working right you'll lose less productive time waiting for unnecessary scanning on every startup to complete.

townstra
Well, I got my hopes up but after running for a few minutes everything froze up and became totally unresponsive.  I had to use the task manager to exit the program.  Back to X2.

That really sounds like a driver issue to me.  Have you tried reinstalling your interface's drivers?
 
Brian

Leadfoot

townstra
I emailed them about a problem twice last week.  No response.  Now when I open X3 my audio interface doesn't even show up.  X2 still works perfectly.  X3 is not looking like it is worth my trouble.

Just out of curiosity, do you have your system "tweaked"? Like services disabled and the like? If so, I would recommend changing it to a normal startup scenario and see if that helps. X3 is worth the trouble, and there are alot of really good people on this forum who can help. Just hang in there. :)

The whole "tweaking" thing causes so many problems..

My system isn't tweaked.  The drivers work great in X2 and it was showing up in X3 at first, it even let me set up the control surface mode of the M-16dx on the midi side just like X2.  I'm going to uninstall it and try a fresh reinstall this weekend.  X2 (and X1) work flawlessly for me and I got some excellent results.  At some point soon my time will become worth a lot more than the cost of X3.  I've been using various Cakewalk software since '99 and this is the first real problem I've ever had with any of it.

Sorry to hear you've been having problems. If you get the chance, give us a ring. Tech support is free for SONAR X3 (other than the cost of a call). Our emails are a bit backed up right now from launch volume.
 
BTW, if you had a bad crash like that and your audio drivers disappear, try rebooting the system versus uninstalling/reinstalling. If you had to forcefully end SONAR from the Task Manager then the drivers for your audio device are probably still "in use" and weren't released properly. Easiest solution for dealing with that is usually a ol' fashion restart.
 
If you crash again like that and the Fault Reporter comes up, definitely send the report through. Tell it that you want to be notified of the status and it will assign a "CWBRN" number that we can more easily trace on our end.

I was having some weird issues with X3b with crashing as well. It seemed to be plugin related so I went to preferences/vst settings/scan options and chose Manual Scan. I've never had the need to scan my plugs every time I start Sonar.
 
I then checked Rescan failed plugins and Rescan existing plugins and clicked Reset. It totally fixed my issues. I think the rescan was the big one. And now with manual scan X3 loads super fast and the projects are much quicker to load. Maybe this will help.
 

A cool useful utility to take a look at what processes are currently running and to see how much CPU each process is taking is Process Explorer:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
I know its been mentioned before on various threads but what the heck...just in case someone is looking for it.

Now that everything has been working correctly for a while I have to say I am really liking X3b a lot.  The Quadcurve Equalizer makes it so easy to notch out correct frequencies in my mix that I am thinking that is the new feature I will get the most use out of (even though I am liking the Tape Emulator quite a bit too).  Now I'm back to being a completely satisfied Cakewalk customer like I have been most of the last 14 years.